Chapter 5 of 5

Lessons and Phoenix

Investigation, telemetry reforms and later polar landings

Told in Mars Polar Lander’s imagined voice · the events are real · source

Mars Polar Lander: The Search Begins
Mars Polar LanderThe twin in the lab told the truth.
NASA/JPL/MSSS
01Engineers tested the same descent logic on hardware kept for the canceled 2001 lander. That test environment helped expose how leg-deployment signals could be mishandled before touchdown checking.
Later landers learned to talk during descent.
02After Mars Polar Lander, NASA missions placed much greater emphasis on live descent telemetry and integrated testing. Spirit, Opportunity, Phoenix, Curiosity, InSight and Perseverance all benefited from those reforms, even though each mission was different.
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA.
Mars Polar LanderPhoenix carried the second chance.
NASA/KSC
03Phoenix used spare hardware and instruments descended from the Mars Surveyor era. It landed in the Martian north in 2008, confirmed water ice, tasted water in TEGA, found perchlorate salts, and measured falling snow with a laser.
The south pole still keeps my secrets.
04Mars Polar Lander and Deep Space 2 have not been positively located. Their value now is partly scientific, partly historical: they mark the cost of a missing line of code and the work that made later polar exploration safer.

The big idea

A failed mission can still improve the next one when investigation, testing and telemetry are treated as one system.

Think about it

What does Phoenix prove about the value of spare hardware?

Fact file

Phoenix landing
25 May 2008
NASA Science calls it the first successful stationary soft landing since Viking 2, about 32 years earlier.
Source ↗
Phoenix site
68.22° N, 234.25° E
Green Valley, Vastitas Borealis; a northern polar site with shallow water ice.
Source ↗

In this chapter: Flight-software testing, descent telemetry, spare hardware and MRO orbital imaging

Sources: Main record · JPL Special Review Board: Report on the Loss of Mars Polar Lander and Deep Space 2 · NASA · Mars Polar Lander · NSSDCA

Machine illustration: AI-made. Photos: NASA Image and Video Library, credited on each picture.

Chapter 5 of 5

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